Career
What I'd Tell Myself at Thirty: The Career Advice Nobody Gave Me
The advice you need at thirty is the advice nobody thinks to give you. It does not fit on a slide and it will not be the focus of any HR training.
Career
Career
Personal Board of Directors: Who Sits on Yours and Why You Need One
A company of one needs a board of five. Most senior people never assemble one and end up taking advice from whoever happens to be in the room.
Career
The Cost of Ambition: What You Pay to Move Up the Organization
Career ambition is sold as a matter of sacrifice and reward. The reward part is well documented. The sacrifice part is more specific than it looks.
Career
Curiosity as a Career Moat: Why Asking Better Questions Outpaces Intelligence
The smartest person in the room is rarely the most valuable one. The most curious person usually is.
Reading
The Reading List of a Boring, Profitable Life
A curated reading list is a confession of what its curator values. The books on most high-profile "recommended reading" lists these days trend toward the flashy, the trending, and the signalling. Atomic Habits. Deep Work. The 4-Hour Workweek. The books of the moment. Some are excellent. Most are
Career
Stress-Testing Your Career: A Red-Team Exercise for the Next Five Years
Most ambitious professionals spend significant time stress-testing their investment portfolios and almost no time stress-testing their careers. This is odd. A portfolio represents a financial bet; a career represents most of your economic upside and a large fraction of your identity. The failure modes of a career — becoming obsolete, being
Decision Making
Saying Yes to the Right Things: A Framework for Opportunity Triage
Most career advice, at the senior level, focuses on saying no. The research-supported importance of declining, the specific phrases that work, the discipline of protecting your time. This is all correct, and it's the lower-hanging fruit. Once you've learned to say no cleanly, a more interesting
Career
How to Handle a Bad Boss Without Quitting Your Career
Almost every senior professional has, at some point, worked for someone they considered a bad manager. The pattern shows up in surveys, in coaching engagements, in honest conversations among peers. A significant fraction of those same professionals will tell you, if they're honest, that the experience of working
Career
How to Think About Career Risk in Your 30s Without Reading More LinkedIn Posts
Most LinkedIn content about career decisions in your 30s is, fundamentally, optimisation porn. Perfect trajectories. Hockey-stick comp growth. The right number of company moves. The optimal time to go for an MBA versus an MSc. The correct calibration of risk for someone with your precise background. The advice is given
Management
The Single Biggest Mistake First-Time Managers Make (and It's Not What You Think)
Most of the coaching literature for first-time managers focuses on specific skills: delegation, feedback, running one-on-ones, holding difficult conversations. These are real skills and worth developing. They are also not what actually fails most new managers. In the hundreds of first-time manager situations I've watched closely, the mistake
Career
Imposter Syndrome Isn't the Enemy — the Enemy Is the Guy Who Doesn't Have It
A director at a FTSE 100 company told me last year, in a tone of genuine confession, that she felt like a fraud. She had been promoted four times in seven years. She managed a team of 60 across three countries. Her department had, under her leadership, grown its contribution
Burnout
Burnout Isn't a Rest Problem — It's an Autonomy Problem
The standard narrative of burnout has three acts. Protagonist works too hard. Protagonist ignores warning signs. Protagonist collapses and takes six months to recover, emerging with a newfound appreciation for boundaries and yoga. The cultural version of this story frames burnout as a rest problem — too much work, insufficient recovery,